Bone Marrow Transplants for the over 60s
 

Hello

I am new to this forum but so glad to have found you.

I am about to start the bone marrow transplant process. I had SARS for 8 years and last month it evolved into MDS. I am in London at the Royal Free Hospital and under the care of two great docs, Prof A Mehta and Prof S McKinnon.

From what I have read, the transplant process risks increase as the patient ages. At 61 I am still eligible for RIC-allo, but I am wondering if anyone over 60 would share with me how the process was for them, even with reduced conditioning. I am a freelance management consultant and I am especially concerned about how long I will be unable to work. When will I have to stop working and for how long?

But any shared experience would be great.

Many Thanks

Sally

Hi Sally.

Oh it's nice to see more Londoners on here! :) I was only 30 when I had my transplant, but I was off work for a full 6 months post-transplant. You can read through my whole transplant saga in this thread, but even with reduced conditioning, you still have all the same infection issues, and everyone's transplant experience is totally different!!

melissa

Sally,

Having experienced doctors is one of the keys to transplant success, so you're off to a good start. If you have been in good overall health other than the SARS and MDS, that's another positive factor. Do you have a matched sibling donor?

Because they skip the chemo, patients who have mini-transplants can recover faster than those who undergo full transplants, but recovery time varies widely, as Melissa says. I haven't seen any statistics on how many weeks or months is typical.

Depending on what you normally do day-to-day as a management consultant, you might want to arrange to give more phone-based or Internet-based assistance to your clients and rely less on in-person meetings, once you feel up to working at all. This will have two advantages: a more flexible schedule that lets you work only when you are able to, and a way to work with minimal exposure to possible sources of infection, namely people, since that's a primary concern after a transplant.

Good luck!